10 Amazing Action Scenes From Terrible Movies

There are many reasons to hate the Star Wars prequels, like the awful dialogue, no real effort to improve on the original trilogy, and horrible characters that will go down in history as the Jar Jar Binks of Star Wars. But, interestingly, there’s one scene in The Phantom Menace that suffers none of those problems and instead delivers one of the greatest Star Wars action scenes ever: the fight between Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon Jin, and Darth Maul.

The beauty of that sequence is that, first of all, it has no clunky dialogue reminiscent of C-SPAN (IN SPAAAAACE) to take you out of the story. It also features one of the most badass Star Wars characters ever, Darth Maul, who manages to look intimidating despite resembling the end result of Game of Thrones’ Night King making sweet love to a bucket of red paint.

Finally, the Phantom Menace fight was the first time we saw Lucas’ creations do something really cool with lightsabers. As great as the original trilogy was, their lightsaber battles were kind of meh, but not here.

During this scene, the characters only seem to be able to move forward through jumps and somersaults like a Cirque du Soleil troop on too much coffee. The lightsaber fencing is equally fast-paced, never giving you a chance to relax and really making you experience the intensity of a laser sword battle between samurai space sorcerers. And that’s awesome.